There is an increasing use of Global Positioning System (GPS)-based navigation systems in vehicles. Such navigation systems receive signals from an array of satellites which are part of the GPS. Based on received signals, GPS-based navigation systems may identify a vehicle's location in terms of latitude and longitude. The navigation system may also detect the vehicle's speed and direction of travel. With geographic information stored in an on-board computer in the vehicle, the navigation system is capable of audio-visually communicating to a user instructions for reaching a given destination.
Currently, GPS-based navigation systems may be implemented as a stand-alone GPS unit, a GPS application on a mobile computing device (e.g., smartphone) or as a unit integrated with the vehicle's entertainment system. Currently, such GPS-based navigation systems are good at providing directions and can incorporate various types of information, such as traffic information, to provide a route to the driver that would exclude traffic congestion, accidents, etc.
However, such systems do not incorporate any information from the vehicle's diagnostic system which may indicate a service issue (e.g., low fuel) that needs to be addressed. For example, the driver only becomes aware of having low fuel in response to the low fuel indicator light appearing. The driver may then open an application (e.g., GasBuddy®) on the driver's mobile computing device to attempt to identify the closest gas station. The driver would then have to enter the destination of the closest gas station in the navigation system to obtain the directions to the closest gas station. Such a process is labor intensive and inefficient. If, however, the navigation system integrated data from the vehicle's diagnostic system, then the navigation system may be able to assist the user in handing the service issue thereby improving the current process in handling such a situation.